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Update: Camo scheme on cannoneer #1 is done. This is more involved a spread than I'd usually do for a WIP but I know some of you are interested in the camo scheme. As I said... it's pretty simple. It took me between 10-15 minutes to do this, closer to 10 than 15. There's a few spots where the paint was a bit thin, I'll go back in and darken them up before completion.

Nice one Gits! Been following this for a long time. Love the trank vets.

Excellent my friend. I like the copper very much. I'm going to hold off judgement on the plasma coil till it's done; not sold yet, but I have faith in the mighty gitsplitta.
On the subject of priming, does anyone else find that below about 8 degrees C (what's that it $?) airbrush primer doesn't stabilise well? I'll be back on the VJ cans for a bit, I think.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Excellent my friend. I like the copper very much. I'm going to hold off judgement on the plasma coil till it's done; not sold yet, but I have faith in the mighty gitsplitta.
On the subject of priming, does anyone else find that below about 8 degrees C (what's that it $?) airbrush primer doesn't stabilise well? I'll be back on the VJ cans for a bit, I think.

Hey Sam, I think one should refrain from priming your models outside when one lives in the UK !!!

Apart from this, Gits, progress is steady & great !

A bit sad not to see more progress on my models, but hey... It's not like I haven't waited for long already !!!

YAY Camo! you can never have enopugh Vets with Camo

I still LOVE that camo pattern. Even as simple as you say it is, it pays off in the long run. I think it really sets the model off!


@graven: I think thats like 45 F or something near there. Ive noticed the same, but also with cans! I pretty much make it a point to only prime when weather is warm, so winters all but shut me down priming-wise. Though ive found the garage keeps a couple of degrees warmer in the winter, and thats just enough to get a good primer coat down. You just cant lollygag around for too long!

OK... let me get this straight.

- graven is "not sold" on the plasma coil OSL... even though I hadn't actually done it yet.
- Yggs in concerned about no progress on his "figures" (note the plural... I thought it was only one). I thought it prudent to practice on the two plasma cannons as I haven't done one of these since last May and I didn't want to screw yours up.

Cripes... tough crowd.


Well, for what it's worth, finished the plasma cannons. This is a side shot of each one. My first "finished" photograph revealed a number of issues that I had to go back and fix. I'm clearly not as good with the airbrush as MajorTom is, though I did find his advice very useful. My aim is off and my brush spatters a bit. New needle so it's not that. Re-did one of them twice before I got it close enough. So, I'm not satisfied with the OSL, but I did try my best. I remember that the first time I took my airbrush apart (way back when), something flew out of it that I'm not sure I found and put back in... that may have something to do with it... or not, may just be me.



Next up... back to Yggsies "figures".

Ok, great, my MODELLLLL then...

Sorry Gits, I must have typed a bit too fast for my mind to catch up...

OSL on the plasma cannon looks great IMHO ! You managed to avoid "over-doing" it, as I tend to do with my airbrush...
Looks neat !!

Just teasin' Yggs!

Thanks... it always makes me nuts when glow goes around corners... because light just doesn't work that way. But on these models you've kinda got to do that or the "glow" would be so small it would probably just look like sloppy painting. Very much stuck to the example and advice MajorTom gave though. I'm not as good at it as he is by a long stretch... but I think it did point me in the right direction.

I'll be finishing up the details on yours probably later today... then I have to think about how I'm going to work the camo with the sculpting and all. We'll see what I can come up with.

Looks great Gits! Very understates though, like its only just been turned on Maybe a bit more would help with the effect next time, especially if your aiming for it to 'pop' significantly on the tabletop.

Great work though, it certainly looks convincinvg.

Wow, just wow, that OSL looks amazing, nice work!

Have to say, ive become so used to seeing the beautiful copper that you do on the Necrons that i didnt even notice it on the MW...my bad. Just goes to show that even on hiatus from Marines you are learning and adding to your repertoire all the time....well done mate.

Tranq plasma vets look awesome. I think the OSL on the coils looks amazing, I'm not crazy about the green spill over onto the cannon itself though. I don't have any suggestions on fixing it. Just blathering on. I'm diggin' the bronze/brass items they have going on and of course, their bases look great. Nice work, Gits!

Oddly enough, the green spill over is actually blue spill over... thin coating of blue over yellow = green. (and I'd be happier with blue too... this is just the way it turned out) Fore some reason a number of the dark blues out there (from various companies) are somewhat translucent, making this a not-uncommon problem.

Dont forget that is essentially a property of light. Im sure if you shined a blue light on a yellow surface it would come up somewhat green.

I knew it was the blue spill over, but wasn't sure how it became green when the yellow was dry. But the translucence (is that a word?) explains it. Cheers

Looking good Gits.
The plasma coil looks the part. Good effort.

Actually, when shining a coloured light on a differently coloured surface it will appear to either take on the colour of the light (due to reflection of the light) or will appear almost black because...and here's the science part... the colour of a surface is due to the wavelengths of light that are reflected or scattered from the surface (e.g. yellow reflects yellow wavelengths), all other wavelengths of light are absorbed. So a yellow surface in the absence of yellow wavelengths of light will not reflect any yellow light and therefore look black.
However, you can argue that as the marine is standing in a well lit (by sunlight) environment that is supplying ample yellow light
(as sunlight is generally "white", containing all wavelengths of light) that will mix with the blue light that is reflected from the shiny surface and therefore appear green...

In short, it looks fine and noone short of a science degree will be worried by it.

I like it, it went fro powering down to powering up! Its not full power, ready to fire yet, but it's charging. As for the green over spray, Im not a fan of it. I dont think the Light source is bright enough to radiant that far.


the small circle is the Light source and the other should be the glow
Now, I'm not an expert of any kind, and I'm scared to attempt OSL. But in my opinion to get the glow radius that you have you need a brighter source. Right now your glow barely reaches the end of the coils and therefore shouldn't touch the yellow areas much.


If you make the source larger as shown, it will cover your yellow areas and then some.

Me personally I like the low power glow and I would clean up the yellow

I could be mistaken but just trying to help

Personally, i really dont mind the green 'overspill' at all....

Apologies for sounding picky: I meant I wasn't sold on the colour palette. However, I really like it. Nice job! Anyway, when do I get a gms ?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Ramos - thanks! My garage is an icebox come winter, but it's where I do all my priming. There's always manual I suppose *sigh*

I appreciate everyone's input. Unfortunately given the limitations of my skill with an airbrush, I think any attempts to "fix" it would just make the figure look worse (this includes fixing the yellow... you just can't fix the area around an airbrushed gradient... at least I cant). I'll keep everyone's comments in mind for the next OSL attempt though.

@graven: Finishing your GMS marine is next up after I get done with Yggs' marine. They'll be another opportunity for botched OSL on him too.

Oh, shush. You're a far more talented painter than I. Silence. Or I shall fetch my stick. The pointy one.

With a rusty nail.

OOoh... I like pointy sticks!!

50 shades of gits.

All right you slave drivers. I took the plasma cannons and by hand mind you... adjusted both the glow of the coils and the OSL around them. Took some really delicate blending to slightly increase the size and gradient of the coil glow... also made the innermost part brighter as MajorTom suggested. Then some super-thin wet blending on the guns in order to beat back some of the excess OSL/overspray which is what the "wandering green" amounts to. (Thanks for making me do this Styro... didn't think it was possible but it turned out OK.)

I hope these are more to everyone's liking...

Damn, that cannon is amazing.

That looks very good Gits! You got everything right, but there is one thing you need to cheat on, for a very specific reason.

Glow must always leave the surface it sits on brighter or the same. The issue I bet you are having is that the dark blue, on the yellow is staining it a dark green, which is the thing that is bugging you I think. What I would do is repaint the yellow where it went over, and do a sky blue edge highlight on the closest surface to the coils.

Your technique is on-target, and with any other colors than blue and yellow, would have worked great. On black or metal it would have been particularly effective. I may suggest that for blue in future you start with that dark blue only on the light source, but then go right over the top of it with a sky blue, then to white, leaving only hints of the dark blue under the sky blue overcoat.

Overall though, you should be pretty happy sir, that is head and shoulders ahead of where you were, great job!

Is there a MajorTom OSL tutorial anywhere?

Great looking objective lighting there. Personally, I think you have a particularly picky audience

Not looking at anyone in particular here, right Graven

 LeadLegion wrote:
Great looking objective lighting there. Personally, I think you have a particularly picky audience

Not looking at anyone in particular here, right Graven

(He pm'd me and asked me to look because something was off to him, otherwise it would have been a simple 'great job!' from me because it is... just an FYI so I don't look like a picky jerk lol!)

I, on the other hand, am perfectly comfortable being a picky jerk